Sea Lion Shores a rat who gnaws at a cat's tail invites destruction

Had this thread up before with no response, just so you know you're not crazy if you think you read this before. :P Someone come play this time! <3

Drool flowed with abandon from his mouth as his bony toes flexed upon the rocks of the shoreline. His ribs showed prominent beneath his wild and befouled coat, his stomach sunken with perpetual hunger. He stood hunched, his lead lowered beneath pointed shoulders as he stared out across the tide pools, tattered ears turning this way and that. He slinked nearer to them, his path erratic and indirect. He approached one with his scrawny side toward it, strafing the last bit of distance before halting at its edge. He sniffed in scrutiny, then lowered his nose to a clump of seaweed. He lifted it and crab scuttled forth, and he darted forward to capture it. Its flailing claws pinched his lip before his teeth crushed and splintered its shell. A chunk of pale meat fell from his jaws onto the stone. He finished devouring what was left of the crustacean between his teeth, before moving to check the next pile of kelp, scooping up the bits he had lost as he stepped ahead.

Vlad and the Rat were true brothers in the sense that both had done what was necessary to survive. The latter bore evidence of the endless struggle on his body, but against all odds, the stringy little speck of a wolf had lived this long. He was a survivor - a conniving, sly, dirty little smudge, but when the world came to a fiery end it would be cockroaches and the Rat that claimed the nuclear winter.

"Rett!" The thrum of footsteps followed the voice. There was a sheen in Vlad's yellow eyes when he drew up alongside the scavenging rodent. "You stopping now eat creb end come cetching water doge. I finding Mees Stenderds," @Rosalyn, that is.

lmfao @ the cockroaches and the Rat

His nose was busy snuffling about the rocks in search of some other sorry little creature to crush between his ruined teeth when Number One showed up. Rett! he called, and Rett lifted his head and turned his face toward him. He did not know what a water dog was, but he understood the word 'catching', and associated it exclusively with something to eat. One did not catch rocks and trees and dirt. One caught deer, and rabbits, and even other wolves. All things he could feed on. It brought a dark and predatory grin to his drool-drenched lips.

"We don' need 'er." He said. He cared not for the girl. Truthfully, he cared not for any of them, though he held a certain amount of respect for his brother, who fed him, and now could help him get more food. Any other mouth was just an extra mouth to feed and this did not interest him.

"We don' need 'er," the Rat insisted bluntly. The creature had kept his distance from Rosalyn and Njal - Vlad had not seen them exchange a single word. It was obvious that the oldest of the Saltwinter alliance was not particularly fond of the Rat, either, and the Russian judged his countryman for that. After all, Njal was the one at the end of his life - and his usefulness.

"Vlad needing! Stenderds ees beeg beauty - end Rett ees making eyes burning," he teased, matching his brother's grin. With a tilt of his head, he indicated down the length of the beach and began to walk - with any luck, a 'water doge' would be sunning itself in the vicinity. "You heving rett gerl, brat? Or you hev eating her?" The former seemed unlikely, but the latter did not.

Ha! to the idea of Rat and a lady friend. His only ladies had become meals as Vlad had guessed, or were the fleas that laid eggs on his raggedy ass. He had tried of course, when happenstance brought him across a female in heat, but if her teeth and rage did not send him packing, competing males certainly stepped in to do it. So, to Vlad's question, the creature snorted - firing a glob of snot into the sand - and shook his head.

"You 'old 'er down. I 'ave 'er then." He grinned toothily.

"You 'old 'er down. I 'ave 'er then." The Rat grinned like a dirty old drunk at the height of a bender, but he was being deadly serious. "HA. I finding true rett for you - hev so small pee-pee steek, wulf gerl no gud," Vlad shot back. Truly, it was a sight he would pay to see - a rat-wolf making sweet love to an actual rat! "Mek deal - you make sex veet rett, I finding most favourites fud for Rett. Not wulf," he emphasized, giving his brother a pre-emptive tsk tsk kind of look.

There was next to nothing that was below the Rat and his tormented mind; and there was even less when it came to food. He was a creature whose stomach was perpetually drawn against his backbone with hunger, despite the fact that his brotherhood to the russki had come with more food than he had had before. He was a creature that played host to many other creatures, that stole his blood and his nutrition, lending him his gaunt and sallow looks.

He snorted at Vlad's comment, his tongue darting out like some ravenous snake to lap at the snot that was flung to the top of his lip. He had no favorite food. Food was food and he ate greedily and without scrutiny. "Go an' find one then," he snickers, his face contorting into an expression of dark humor.

Challenge accepted, apparently. Vlad narrowed his eyes, studying the Rat for signs that he was joking before concluding that the wretched creature probably didn't know how. "You much seek wulf een head, Rett," the Russian concluded with a shake of his head, but morbid curiosity pushed him to do as the Rat had asked. "You vaiting," he commanded, and disappeared towards the grotto. Plenty of rats sought refuge in the dark.

He returned half an hour later. The Rat had made pulp of his flank by that point, chewing at the civilization of invisible pests that had settled there. Vlad dropped a large, dazed rat into the sand, pinning its wriggling body with a salt-stained paw. It squealed and struggled, snapping at the Russian's toes. The resemblance was uncanny. The true rat was in far better condition, sporting a coat that was mostly free from gaps and host to far fewer fleas. "Eef fail," Vlad warned, displaying his yellow teeth in a conniving smile, "Vlad geev Rett job." It was high time the creature earned his keep - he was all but useless as an aid to recruitment, but as a sneak he might do rather well.

Have fun with this one, Karm! :P

He was sick in the head; he was sick in the body. He simultaneously knew this and did not know this, such a peculiar understanding of himself and the world did he have. He did not think nor ponder much as Vlad left, doing as he was bid he merely waited. But inaction made the presence of his parasites all the more detectable, and he chewed at them in a vain attempt to ease the itching they brought upon his skin.

Number One tossed a dazed rat in front of him, and he flashed him another dark and toothy grin. He did not require Vlad's threat to put him to work; his mind was still obsessively fixed on the idea of being rewarded with food, and indeed, he drooled even as he looked at the rodent. Here was food, but first, he needed to insure more food. He leaped upon the rat, his teeth biting at it and drawing a squeal as if he could not resist this one aggressive action.

With the rat between his paws and his gleaming, slobbery fangs bared in a twisted grin, he started to thrust. But the nature of the two creatures involved was simply not going to work. The scurvy wolf thrust vigorously in the air, guided by some warped instinct on how to do this thing, until he was thrusting wildly and faceplanting into the ground. Caught in his rhythm of ghastly humping, his snout buried into the sands, the real-rat found its escape from out beneath the wolf-rat's sunken stomach. It scurried, shrieking, down the beach, surely horrified, and surely suffering from PTSD.

All humped out, the Rat sat up with a stupid, blank look.